Ruling — Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Massive Darkness 2: Hellscapebg-315610-en-1e

Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape is played over a series of game rounds.[1] Each round is composed of the following 4 phases:[1][2]

1. Hero Phase [1][2]

2. Enemy Phase [1][2]

3. Level Up Phase [1][2]

4. Darkness Phase [1][2]

**Hero Phase**

During the Hero Phase, players collectively decide the order in which Heroes activate.[2] When a Hero activates, they become the active Hero and take their turn by performing 3 actions of their choice, then flipping their activation token to its gray side to show they have already activated for that round.[2] (Note: If playing a single player game, the Hero has 4 actions per turn instead of 3 [3]).

The available actions are:

* Move [2]

* Attack [2]

* Recover [2]

* Trade and Equip [2]

* Special Action [2]

When a Hero performs a Move action, they gain 2 movement points (MP).[2] Each movement point can be used to:

* Move to an adjacent Zone [2]

* Open a door in their current Zone [2]

* Interact with objects in their current Zone [2]

All unspent MPs are lost at the end of the Move action.[2] A Hero must spend 1 movement point to move their miniature to an adjacent Zone, and they cannot move through walls, closed doors, or move diagonally.[2] If a Hero moves out of a Zone containing any Enemy, they suffer Reaction damage, taking 1 Wound per Enemy miniature in that Zone.[2]

**Resolving an Attack**

After the attacking Hero has determined their target is within range and there is Line of Sight, the attack is resolved by performing these 3 steps in order:[4][5]

1. Roll all dice in the dice pool: Gather all Attack dice from the attacker, Defense dice from the defender, and any Enemy dice, and roll them together (including the Shadow die if the attacking Hero is in Shadow).[4][5]

2. Apply abilities and effects: The player who rolls the dice must resolve all dice results but can choose the order in which they are resolved.[4][5] After deciding to resolve an effect from a die, the player may not reroll, modify, or change the facing of that die.[4][5]

3. Add up Attack and subtract Defense: Once all abilities and effects are applied, add together all Attack dice, then for each Defense die, remove 1 Attack die.[4][5] The amount of Attack dice left is dealt as Wounds to the target, in addition to any Wounds generated by other abilities and effects.[4][5]

**Ending the Game**

* The players win the game when the objective described in the Quest is achieved, at which point the game ends immediately.[1]

* The players lose the game if a Quest-specific losing condition is met, or if they need to spend a Lifebringer token and there are no Lifebringer tokens left.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.7 · WHY SO DARK? · 1 . HERO PHASE · 2 . ENEMY PHASE · 3 . LEVEL UP PHASE · 4 . DARKNESS PHASE

[2] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.16 · ENEMY CARDS · 1 . HERO PHASE · MOVE ACTION · MOVING TO AN ADJACENT ZONE

[3] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.29 · SINGLE PLAYER RULES · HELLBREAKER CHALLENGE · BREAKING TIES · Bridges

[4] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.20 · LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK

[5] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.20

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 187 ms · ask 10612 ms · total 10801 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10801 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 13, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "1. Each player chooses a Hero and takes the corresponding Hero card and miniature. They take a plastic Hero dashboard and place their Hero card in the Hero card slot (A). Then, they take the plastic base in the color of their choice and attach it to their Hero miniature (B). Take a Level token and s", "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.046671, "snippet": "Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape is played in a series of rounds. Each round is comprised of 4 phases: 1 - Hero Phase 2 - Enemy Phase 3 - Level Up Phase 4 - Darkness Phase In the Hero Phase, the Heroes take actions to fight Enemies, move through the Dungeon, gain items, and complete Quest objectives. E", "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS · 1 . HERO PHASE · MOVE ACTION · MOVING TO AN ADJACENT ZONE", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Sort the Mob cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck. Sort the Roaming Monster cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck. Sort the item cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck. Sort the Mo", "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "If playing a single player game, the player must choose only 1 Hero, but treats all other rules as if playing with 2 Heroes, such as Roaming Monster's Health and quantity of Minions on Mobs. The Hero has 4 actions per turn instead of the usual 3. Players may choose to increase any Quest's difficulty", "headingPath": "SINGLE PLAYER RULES · HELLBREAKER CHALLENGE · BREAKING TIES · Bridges", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "After the attacking Hero has determined their target is within range and there is Line of Sight, it's time to assemble the dice pool and resolve the attack. After the dice pool has been assembled, the attack is resolved by performing the following steps, in order. All 3 steps must be completed: 1- R", "headingPath": "LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "After the attacking Hero has determined their target is within range and there is Line of Sight, it’s time to assemble the dice pool and resolve the attack. RESOLVING THE ATTACK After the dice pool has been assembled, the attack is resolved by performing the following steps, in order. All 3 steps mu", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Bosses are unique Enemies featured in some Quests (in those, killing them usually is the winning condition). The Quests indicate a Chamber where the Boss is placed during setup, this is the Boss Chamber. Bosses do not move, activate, or have any effects until the Boss Fight begins, which starts when", "headingPath": "DUNGEON LEVEL", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Setup: Place the Berserker dashboard next to their Hero dashboard and place the Stance token on the stance in which they wish to start. After choosing their Level 1 skill, place its card below its corresponding stance. Note that some skills can be placed under any stance. Gameplay: Every time the Be", "headingPath": "Bridges", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "WHY SO DARK? · 1 . HERO PHASE · 2 . ENEMY PHASE · 3 . LEVEL UP PHASE · 4 . DARKNESS PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS · 1 . HERO PHASE · MOVE ACTION · MOVING TO AN ADJACENT ZONE", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 29, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SINGLE PLAYER RULES · HELLBREAKER CHALLENGE · BREAKING TIES · Bridges", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 570 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 570 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89810 of 2159 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 21, 2026 17:05 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.13	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS · 1 . HERO PHASE · MOVE ACTION · MOVING TO AN ADJACENT ZONE	p.16	0.046671 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.14	0.046642 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	SINGLE PLAYER RULES · HELLBREAKER CHALLENGE · BREAKING TIES · Bridges	p.29	0.045928 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK	p.20	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)		p.20	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	DUNGEON LEVEL	p.27	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	Bridges	p.32	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 76 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.14	#3	0.046642 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.13	#1	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK	p.20	#5	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)		p.20	#6	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.15	#12	0.014493 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	WHY SO DARK? · 1 . HERO PHASE · 2 . ENEMY PHASE · 3 . LEVEL UP PHASE · 4 . DARKNESS PHASE	p.7	#11	0.027505 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS · 1 . HERO PHASE · MOVE ACTION · MOVING TO AN ADJACENT ZONE	p.16	#2	0.046671 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	SINGLE PLAYER RULES · HELLBREAKER CHALLENGE · BREAKING TIES · Bridges	p.29	#4	0.045928 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	WHY SO DARK? · 1 . HERO PHASE · 2 . ENEMY PHASE · 3 . LEVEL UP PHASE · 4 . DARKNESS PHASE	p.7	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS · 1 . HERO PHASE · MOVE ACTION · MOVING TO AN ADJACENT ZONE	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	SINGLE PLAYER RULES · HELLBREAKER CHALLENGE · BREAKING TIES · Bridges	p.29	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK	p.20	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)		p.20	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 187 ms · first delta 5710 ms · total 10801 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 187 ms · ask 10612 ms · gateway work 10801 ms · total 10801 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3437
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 666
tok/sec: 133.1 tok/sec — 666 output tokens in 5.005 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 9s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 502), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.